complicit

A New York jury has found that French banking giant BNP Paribas’s work in Sudan helped to prop up the regime of former ruler Omar al-Bashir, making it liable for atrocities that took place under his rule.

The eight-member jury on Friday sided with three plaintiffs originally from Sudan, awarding a total of $20.75m in damages, after hearing testimony describing horrors committed by Sudanese soldiers and the Popular Defence Forces, the government-linked militia known as the Janjaweed.

The plaintiffs – two men and one woman, all now American citizens – told the federal court in Manhattan that they had been tortured, burned with cigarettes, slashed with a knife, and, in the case of the woman, sexually assaulted.

“I have no relatives left,” Entesar Osman Kasher told the court.

The trial focused on whether BNP Paribas’s financial services were a “natural and adequate cause” of the harm suffered by survivors of ethnic cleansing and mass violence in Sudan.

A spokesperson for BNP Paribas said in a statement to the AFP news agency that the ruling “is clearly wrong and there are very strong grounds to appeal the verdict”.

Bobby DiCello, who represented the plaintiffs, called the verdict “a victory for justice and accountability”.

“The jury recognised that financial institutions cannot turn a blind eye to the consequences of their actions,” DiCello said.

“Our clients lost everything to a campaign of destruction fuelled by US dollars, that BNP Paribas facilitated and that should have been stopped,” he said.

BNP Paribas “has supported the ethnic cleansing and ruined the lives of these three survivors”, DiCello said during closing remarks on Thursday.

The French bank, which did business in Sudan from the late 1990s until 2009, provided letters of credit that allowed Sudan to honour import and export commitments.

The plaintiffs argued that these assurances enabled the regime to keep exporting cotton, oil and other commodities, enabling it to receive billions of dollars from buyers that helped finance its operations.

Defence lawyer Dani James argued, “There’s just no connection between the bank’s conduct and what happened to these three plaintiffs.”

The lawyer for BNP Paribas also said the French bank’s operations in Sudan were legal in Europe and that global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) partnered with the Sudanese government during the same period.

Defence lawyers also claimed that the bank had no knowledge of human rights violations occurring at that time.

The plaintiffs would have “had their injuries without BNP Paribas”, said lawyer Barry Berke.

“Sudan would and did commit human rights crimes without oil or BNP Paribas,” Berke said.

The verdict followed a five-week jury trial conducted by US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who last year denied a request by BNP Paribas to get the case thrown out ahead of trial.

Hellerstein wrote in his decision last year that there were facts showing a relationship between BNP Paribas’s banking services and abuses perpetrated by the Sudanese government.

BNP Paribas had in 2014 agreed to plead guilty and pay an $8.97bn penalty to settle US charges it transferred billions of dollars for Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities subject to economic sanctions.

The US government recognised the Sudanese conflict as a genocide in 2004. The war claimed some 300,000 lives between 2002 and 2008 and displaced 2.5 million people, according to the United Nations.

Al-Bashir, who led Sudan for three decades, was ousted and detained in April 2019 following months of protests in Sudan.

He is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on genocide charges.

In the months that followed al-Bashir’s ousting in 2019, army generals agreed to share power with civilians, but that ended in October 2021, when the leader of the army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commander, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, seized control in a coup.

In April 2023, fighting broke out between the two sides, and forces on both sides have been accused of committing war crimes.

Weapons and support from the West, led by the United States, have been central to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The United Kingdom’s and European Union’s relations with Israel remain essentially unchanged despite the war.

Is this complicity? And could there be legal consequences for Western nations and their leaders?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Michael Lynk – former United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in occupied Palestinian territory

Yara Hawari – co-director of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network

Ralph Wilde – professor of international law at University College London

London, United Kingdom – Jonathon Porritt, a 75-year-old Oxford-educated environmentalist, is among the hundreds of people that the UK has cracked down on over their support of Palestine Action.

He was arrested and charged earlier this month, under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, for holding up a sign at a rally decrying the government’s decision to outlaw the protest group.

“I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action,” read the cardboard placard that he, and many of the 520 others arrested, raised.

His bail hearing is scheduled for late October.

But Porritt is not a hardened criminal.

He spent 30 years advising the king on environmental issues when the monarch held the Prince of Wales title. He has also chaired a sustainable development commission set up by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and throughout his career has worked in politics, academia and directed Friends of the Earth. In 2000, he was awarded a CBE, a high-ranking order, for services to environmental protection.

Al Jazeera spoke to Porritt about his activism, Palestine, the role of business and the effect of weapons manufacturing on climate change.

Al Jazeera: As the crisis in Gaza worsens, you have urged the UK to take action to stop Israel’s onslaught. With more than 700 other business leaders, you recently called for targeted sanctions against those accused of violating international law, including war crimes. Does that include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, since he is wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court?

Jonathan Porritt: It would certainly include members of his cabinet who have been very forthright in the comments that they’ve made, which clearly breach any understanding of the rights of people to exist … and indicate a readiness to ethnically cleanse Gaza and indeed to prepare to do the same in the West Bank.

It’s very clear that those sanctions do now need to be brought forward, and I think it is important that it’s business leaders that are suggesting that you just can’t allow those kinds of blatant attacks on the Palestinian people to continue.

Al Jazeera: On an individual level, many people appalled at Israel’s conduct in Gaza have joined a campaign to boycott Israeli goods, in an attempt at hitting the economy that fuels the war. Is this an effective way to stem the violence?

Porritt: It is something I do on an individual level. And this is purely personal, but I would be deeply unhappy buying anything exported into the UK from Israel. I feel that the government of Israel at the moment and its track record in terms of the way it’s dealt with the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is so repugnant to me personally that I feel uncomfortable supporting the economic standing of that country, so that’s my own personal choice.

I don’t go out of my way to suggest that everybody needs to do that.

I think lifestyle decisions are really important, ethical decisions are really important, but do they actually change very much? Probably not, is the reality, and an awful lot of people simply don’t know the issues behind these choices.

Al Jazeera: Your arrest earlier this month made headlines. What do you think figures such as King Charles and Tony Blair, who you’ve worked with, would make of your radical activism?

Porritt: I was comfortable taking on establishment roles as chair of the commission [launched by Blair], for instance, [and] helping to set up the Prince of Wales’s business and sustainability programme, all that kind of stuff. But my life started as an activist in the Green Party and in Friends of the Earth, so they probably always knew that I was more predisposed to that tactical route than to the inside track that I nonetheless spent 30 years pursuing.

Al Jazeera: With several wars raging, is the link between militaries and weapons companies, which are major carbon polluters, and climate change being talked about enough?

Porritt: No, and this really bugs me a lot.

The investment in nuclear weapons of one kind or another, upgrades going on all over the world, and increasing the number of warheads again – this is just crazy, and on the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima you think, how can that possibly be?

And then, then you look at the environmental impacts of all of that, of course, including the CO2 footprint of vast increases in expenditure on arms, and it’s just the worst possible way of trying to increase security for people in their own country – to make these hugely carbon-intensive and destructive investments and yet more weapons of mass destruction.

Al Jazeera: The UK has proscribed Palestine Action as a terror organisation, but its backers say outlawing the group is a way to silence dissent as Israel wages war in Gaza. It is now legally challenging the proscription. What does Palestine Action stand for, in your view?

Porritt: What Palestine Action actually stands for is a readiness to use violence against property as part of its campaigning tactics against, in particular, those arms companies [that are] deeply complicit in the continuing genocide in Gaza. They see as being proportionate when set against the devastation going on in Gaza.

That choice about tactics is morally based, wholly defensible … and in no way indicative of a formally designated terrorist organisation.

In the last few years, there’s been an astonishing legal crackdown on basic rights in this country, particularly the right to the freedom of speech and the right to freedom to protest

The designation as a terrorist organisation … is to try and silence Palestine Action. That’s where I come back to the now incontrovertible proof of the UK government’s complicity in this genocide, and because of that complicity – its continuation of licences for arms quite clearly being used to massacre innocent people across Gaza – if you look at that complicity, they needed something extra. They needed an even bigger stick to shut Palestine Action up so that the citizens of the UK were not permitted to recognise just how abhorrent this government’s behaviour is.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) has released a new report mapping the corporations aiding Israel in the displacement of Palestinians and its genocidal war on Gaza, in breach of international law.

Francesca Albanese’s latest report, which is scheduled to be presented at a news conference in Geneva on Thursday, names 48 corporate actors, including United States tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. – Google’s parent company – and Amazon. A database of more than 1000 corporate entities was also put together as part of the investigation.

“[Israel’s] forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech – providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability – while investors and private and public institutions profit freely,” the report said.

“Companies are no longer merely implicated in occupation – they may be embedded in an economy of genocide,” it said, in a reference to Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip. In an expert opinion last year, Albanese said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel was committing genocide in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The report stated that its findings illustrate “why Israel’s genocide continues”.

“Because it is lucrative for many,” it said.

What arms and tech companies were identified in the report?

Israel’s procurement of F-35 fighter jets is part of the world’s largest arms procurement programme, relying on at least 1,600 companies across eight nations. It is led by US-based Lockheed Martin, but F-35 components are constructed globally.

Italian manufacturer Leonardo S.p.A is listed as a main contributor in the military sector, while Japan’s FANUC Corporation provides robotic machinery for weapons production lines.

The tech sector, meanwhile, has enabled the collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, “supporting Israel’s discriminatory permit regime”, the report said. Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon grant Israel “virtually government-wide access to their cloud and AI technologies”, enhancing its data processing and surveillance capacities.

The US tech company IBM has also been responsible for training military and intelligence personnel, as well as managing the central database of Israel’s Population, Immigration and Borders Authority (PIBA) that stores the biometric data of Palestinians, the report said.

It found US software platform Palantir Technologies expanded its support to the Israeli military since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023. The report said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe the company provided automatic predictive policing technology used for automated decision-making in the battlefield, to process data and generate lists of targets including through artificial intelligence systems like “Lavender”, “Gospel” and “Where’s Daddy?”

What other companies are identified in the report?

The report also lists several companies developing civilian technologies that serve as “dual-use tools” for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

These include Caterpillar, Leonardo-owned Rada Electronic Industries, South Korea’s HD Hyundai and Sweden’s Volvo Group, which provide heavy machinery for home demolitions and the development of illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Rental platforms Booking and Airbnb also aid illegal settlements by listing properties and hotel rooms in Israeli-occupied territory.

The report named the US’s Drummond Company and Switzerland’s Glencore as the primary suppliers of coal for electricity to Israel, originating primarily from Colombia.

In the agriculture sector, Chinese Bright Dairy & Food is a majority owner of Tnuva, Israel’s largest food conglomerate, which benefits from land seized from Palestinians in Israel’s illegal outposts. Netafim, a company providing drip irrigation technology that is 80-percent owned by Mexico’s Orbia Advance Corporation, provides infrastructure to exploit water resources in the occupied West Bank.

Treasury bonds have also played a critical role in funding the ongoing war on Gaza, according to the report, with some of the world’s largest banks, including France’s BNP Paribas and the UK’s Barclays, listed as having stepped in to allow Israel to contain the interest rate premium despite a credit downgrade.

Who are the main investors behind these companies?

The report identified US multinational investment companies BlackRock and Vanguard as the main investors behind several listed companies.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is listed as the second largest institutional investor in Palantir (8.6 percent), Microsoft (7.8 percent), Amazon (6.6 percent), Alphabet (6.6 percent) and IBM (8.6 per cent), and the third largest in Lockheed Martin (7.2 percent) and Caterpillar (7.5 percent).

Vanguard, the world’s second-largest asset manager, is the largest institutional investor in Caterpillar (9.8 percent), Chevron (8.9 percent) and Palantir (9.1 percent), and the second largest in Lockheed Martin (9.2 percent) and Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems (2 percent).

Are companies profiting from dealing with Israel?

The report states that “colonial endeavours and their associated genocides have historically been driven and enabled by the corporate sector.” Israel’s expansion on Palestinian land is one example of “colonial racial capitalism”, where corporate entities profit from an illegal occupation.

Since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, “entities that previously enabled and profited from Palestinian elimination and erasure within the economy of occupation, instead of disengaging are now involved in the economy of genocide,” the report said.

For foreign arms companies, the war has been a lucrative venture. Israel’s military spending from 2023 to 2024 surged 65 percent, amounting to $46.5bn – one of the highest per capita worldwide.

Several entities listed on the exchange market – particularly in the arms, tech and infrastructure sectors – have seen their profits rise since October 2023. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange also rose an unprecedented 179 percent, adding $157.9bn in market value.

Global insurance companies, including Allianz and AXA, invested large sums in shares and bonds linked to Israel’s occupation, the report said, partly as capital reserves but primarily to generate returns.

Booking and Airbnb also continue to profit from rentals in Israeli-occupied land. Airbnb briefly delisted properties on illegal settlements in 2018 but later reverted to donating profits from such listings to humanitarian causes, a practice the report referred to as “humanitarian-washing”.

Are private companies liable under international law?

According to Albanese’s report, yes. Corporate entities are under an obligation to avoid violating human rights through direct action or in their business partnerships.

States have the primary responsibility to ensure that corporate entities respect human rights and must prevent, investigate and punish abuses by private actors. However, corporations must respect human rights even if the state where they operate does not.

A company must therefore assess whether activities or relationships throughout its supply chain risk causing human rights violations or contributing to them, according to the report.

The failure to act in line with international law may result in criminal liability. Individual executives can be held criminally liable, including before international courts.

The report called on companies to divest from all activities linked to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, which is illegal under international law.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion ruling that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”. In light of this advisory opinion, the UN General Assembly demanded that Israel bring to an end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory by September 2025.

Albanese’s report said the ICJ’s ruling “effectively qualifies the occupation as an act of aggression … Consequently, any dealings that support or sustain the occupation and its associated apparatus may amount to complicity in an international crime under the Rome Statute.

“States must not provide aid or assistance or enter into economic or trade dealings, and must take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that would assist in maintaining the illegal situation created by Israel in the oPt.”

Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice says the acting director of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a fundamentalist Christian who shares some of Israel’s objectives. Hundreds of unarmed Palestinians have been killed at aid sites led by GHF.